TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Love Crimes In Paul Auster’s latest novel, the protagonist indulges passions new and forbidden. feeds.nytimes.com |
Dan Burt Reading From His Poems, The Complete Ripley Radio Mysteries by Patricia Highsmith, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Dan Burt Reading From his Poemsthepoetryarchive.org £12.75, 48 minsDan Burt's craftsmanship is complex – villanelles, tercets – and his cross-referencing wide-ranging – Jewish history, Cranach, Mozart. It's also combined with disarming simplicity and a striking exploration of metaphor – the "debt bond" in a relationship where "closing the books is hard to do".The Complete Ripley Radio MysteriesPatricia Highsmith. Full cast dramatisations with Ian Hart as Tom RipleyBBC £20, 6hrsFive complete dramas chart the career of smooth-talking Tom Ripley, driven by his sinister psychosis to impersonate, defraud and murder. He repeatedly eludes capture – but only until another chilling event threatens his secrets and leads him to kill again. Unnerving.A Christmas CarolCharles Dickens. Read by Martin JarvisCSA Word £9.99, 2hrs 30minsMartin Jarvis and A Christmas Carol go together like plum pudding and brandy. His narration captures Dickens's zest, starting with the eerie appearance of old Jacob Marley, and also – without mawkishness – the sentiment surrounding Tiny Tim and the tapping of his crutch.AudiobooksRachel Redfordguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Rory MacLean's travel book of the year: William Dalrymple's Nine Lives William Dalrymple's triumphant return to travel writing not only illuminates India's relationship with religion but casts the genre itself in a new lightNine Lives is William Dalrymple's first travel book in a decade. Its publication has led him to speculate, first in Prospect and then in the Guardian, about the health of the genre. "Does travel writing have a future?" he asks, with his tongue dancing against his cheek.Back in the 1940s, Evelyn Waugh predicted the death of travel writing. "Never again, I suppose, shall we land on foreign soil with a letter of credit and passport and feel the world wide open before us," he despaired. Then along came Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris, Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron and a shipload of fellow travellers. The world, even after the devastation of the second world war and the invention of the jet plane, still offered a vastness and magic that stirred the soul and – through the pen of literary adventurers – set us all on voyages of discovery.Publishers were also moved, flooding the market to catch the trend. Quality gave way to quantity, the public sniffed a rat and jumped ship. Sales collapsed and many voyagers – including Dalrymple – changed course for the less choppy seas of history, biography or fiction. Since then, readers of the genre have scanned the horizon for the next generation, or for old hands to reinvent themselves and find a new way of writing about the world.Nine Lives is a collection of short stories that explores how south Asia's religious traditions are being affected by modernity. Dalrymple asks: "What does it actually mean to be a holy man or a Jain nun, a mystic or a tantric seeking salvation on the roads of modern India, as the Tata trucks thunder past?" In response, he interviews nine individuals with remarkable stories: a young nun who tests her powers of detachment by watching a dear companion starve to death, a prison warder who transforms himself into a medium for the god Vishnu, a Rajasthani Homer who sings medieval poems 600 years old and 4,000 lines long, a Tibetan monk who took up arms against Chinese invaders and atones for the violence by printing perfect prayer flags.The result is a wise and rewarding book fizzing with Dalrymple's signature erudition and lightness of touch. He asks a temple dancer: "Is this a full-time job, becoming a god?" At a Bengali cremation ground – surrounded by naked sadhus playing cards – he enquires: "So how do you go about finding the right skull?" He trips across the ages, leavening historical passages with details such as Kerala's spices flavouring "the stews of Shakespeare's London". The book is also enriched by opinion, especially on the spread of intolerant Wahhabi Islam and the dynamiting of Sufi sites in the subcontinent.But there's another aspect of modernity at work here. Dalrymple has hit upon a fresh way of bringing his subject to readers. At his book launch at London's Barbican, he appeared on the stage alongside the incarnation of Vishnu, a smoky-voiced Tamil diva, five fakir monks and other spiritual musicians.With his Nine Lives concert tour, Dalrymple recognised that the old formulas have lost their appeal. Today, travel writers who want to reach audiences beyond their immediate family need to find a different way of delivering their books, and not simply by creating a fan group on Facebook. Thanks to the internet, the new generation of readers expect to tag, post and share their discoveries. This doesn't mean that traditional travel writing – or indeed printed books – are about to sink without trace. Stories still need to be created or crafted by a sole writer (attempts at collaborative online "wikinovels" have to date been banal). But people are increasingly unwilling to be passive consumers. They want to "experience" narratives and to interact with the world – which is precisely what travel writers have been doing since Herodotus first let go of his mother's apron strings.Not so long ago, Dalrymple acknowledged that some writers – myself included – had advanced travel writing as an alternative to fiction using "the techniques of the novel – developing characters, selecting and tailoring experience into a series of scenes and set pieces, arranging the action so as to give the narrative shape and momentum". Now authors are keeping in step with the times by collaborating with web gurus, photographers, game designers or – as in the case of Nine Lives – musicians, to create something new and bring a more transformative experience to readers. At the threshold of an age of new platforms and electronic ink, travel writing can once again build on its traditional role, linking one culture to another, sharing wonders, telling stories that create bridges of understanding and respect between people. As Dalrymple's title suggests, travel writing itself seems to have nine lives.• Rory MacLean's latest book, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India, is published by Penguin in the UK and by IG Publishing in the US. His UK bestsellers Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon are available in Tauris Parke Paperbacks.IndiaPakistanTravelRory Macleanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Blocked by depression Bestselling author Marian Keyes has revealed on her blog that severe depression is forcing her to abandon writingThe bestselling novelist Marian Keyes (right) has revealed that she is suffering from a "crippling" depression that has left her unable to write. This was how she broke the news to readers on her website this week:My dear amigos, happy new year to you all and I hope your festive season was not too unpleasant. I'm very sorry but this is going to be a very short piece because I am laid low with crippling depression. Regular readers know that I've been prone to depression on and off over the years but this is in a totally different league. This is much, much worse. I know I'm leaving myself open to stinky journalists saying, 'What has she got to be depressed about, the self-indulgent whiner, when there are people out there with real troubles?', so I won't go on about it.All I will say is that I'm aware that these are terrible times and that there are people out there who have been so ruined by the current economic climate that they've lost the roof over their heads and every day is a battle for basic survival and I wish I could make their pain go away. But although I'm blessed enough to have a roof over my head, I still feel like I'm living in hell. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't write, I can't read, I can't talk to people. The worst thing is that I feel it will never end. I know lots of people don't believe it, but depression is an illness and unlike, say, a broken leg, you don't know when it'll get better.So amigos, I'm sorry to abandon you for the moment. Full service will be restored at some stage, I hope. Thank you in advance for your kindness because you've always been so lovely to me. And, once again, happy new year. I hope it's a nice one for you.Depression in adultsHealth & wellbeingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell Here’s a riddle: How do you make your book a best seller on the Kindle? Answer: Give copies away. feeds.nytimes.com |